brian

10 Years Later, My Creations Haven’t Come to Life and Killed Me, Yet

Screenshot from Comix Zone on Sega Genesis

I started listening to a new podcast called ComicLab, in which comics professionals Brad Guigar and Dave Kellett (and sometimes a guest) sit down and talk about making comics and making a living from comics. It’s something of a spiritual successor to an old podcast I used to listen to called Webcomics Weekly, which also starred Guigar and Kellett, along with Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub. Unfortunately, Webcomics Weekly petered out some years back. However, it was one of the driving forces behind me resuming work on Mike and the Ninja at the beginning of 2008, after a hiatus of more than a year. Not only did I get a lot of useful and funny information from the podcast, it also inspired me to just sit down and work. I wanted to make comics, but that can’t happen without a lot of work, and it took me a long time to realize and fully appreciate the amount (and sometimes complexity) of work involved. Webcomics Weekly came at almost the perfect time, the first episode landing maybe two or three months before I decided to put serious effort into Mike and the Ninja, once and for all. Listening and re-listening to those episodes kept me going during those first fragile months of tackling a long-term project, and gave me the motivation to press onward.

Go on….

brian

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Nuked My Video Game “Want” List

Bionic Commando Explosion

In my 2017 year-in-review post, I teased a scintillating future blog about video game-buying habits. I’ve reached a desperate point in my life in which these habits must change, and I’m ready to reveal everything in this exclusive tell-all blog that I definitely didn’t just write on my lunch break.

Some years ago, maybe from 2012-2015 or so, Kickstarter overflowed with crowdfunded video games. Every week (probably every day, to be honest!), a new game with a clever pitch, a sizeable funding target, and enticing stretch goals hit the service. Some were entirely new games, while others were long-awaited sequels, hollow nostalgia bait, or spiritual successors from the creators of long-dead franchises.

The onslaught of new and exciting crowdfunded games was a lot for me to keep track of. I simply have too much professional wrestling knowledge clogging my brain matter to remember all the video games I want to buy. Priorities, man. So, I started a “want” list that included all of the Kickstarter games I eagerly awaited. In time, this list expanded to also cover upcoming games not on Kickstarter, plus already-released games that I did not yet have, but wanted to get. This all seemed perfectly logical and harmless, and the want list became my go-to resource for all of my game-buying decisions. I made a spreadsheet and organized games by platform and scored them as low, medium, high, or very high priority, based on how badly I wanted them. Clearly, I don’t take my hobbies too seriously.

Go on….